Death is in the Air (Secret Seal Isle Mysteries Book 5)

by Lucy Quinn

  “It’ll be fine, Mom,” Cookie assured her. “DeMasi’s behind bars, remember? We never had any proof he’d sent anybody after me. And I’ll be at the FBI offices the whole time, anyway. Can’t get much safer than that, right?” She reached up and rested a hand on her mother’s arm. “And trust me, romance is the last thing on my mind right now.”

  Rain sniffed but let it go. Cookie wasn’t quite sure if her mother was satisfied with her answer or if she’d just decided it would do no good to argue. Whether it turned out to be a good idea or not still remained to be seen. Either way, Cookie was going to Philly.

  15

  “You doing okay?” Hunter asked as he pushed open the office door and stepped back to let Cookie enter ahead of him.

  “Up until you held the door for me, just fine,” Cookie retorted. “Can ‘gentleman’ Hunter please go away and let my snarky partner come out to play instead?” But truthfully, beneath her bravado she wasn’t okay. Far from it.

  On the whole trip to Philly from Secret Seal Isle, she’d immersed herself in the logistics of their trip rather than focusing on the destination. That had been easy enough to do, though completely unnecessary since Hunter had made the trip enough times he could do it in his sleep. But Cookie had only done it once before, and that had been when she and her mother had driven a rental van stuffed with all their worldly possessions to the small island off the Maine coast. Going through the process in reverse now, and doing it as a traveler with nothing more than a duffel bag, was completely different.

  She’d let Hunter take the lead, following him first thing in the morning onto the ferry to Hancock. From there they’d caught a bus and spent a little over an hour traveling to Bangor. Then they’d caught a nonstop flight from the airport to Philly.

  “I can’t believe you’ve done this, what, four, five times now?” Cookie commented as they stepped out of the cab they’d taken from the airport. “You should get a medal or something.”

  “From you, maybe,” Hunter agreed with a smirk. “Not sure the FBI feels the same way.” He’d taken at least one of those trips as personal time, which had then turned into a case after he’d arrived. “But yeah, I’ve had time to hone my route a bit.”

  Cookie turned her attention to the FBI building where she’d spent so many years. It was a massive, dark, glass building that took up an entire block all on its own. She stared up at the ten floors and wondered how she’d ever worked here without feeling like an ant gazing out over a busy street. Taking the first step into the lobby since she’d left, she worried that she was about to get squashed.

  She automatically headed straight for the metal detectors, already reaching for her ID. Then suddenly she stopped, remembering she didn’t have one anymore. She’d left it sitting on her desk, along with her official Bureau-issued sidearm, the day she’d left.

  It was weird how she slipped right back into FBI mode after being gone for so long. Shaking herself a little, she turned and made her way over to the desk, head down and face flaming. Hunter stepped up beside her and told the guard, “Hey, I need a visitor pass for my friend.”

  “Friend? Is that what we’re calling her these days?” the guard asked, her voice familiar to Cookie.

  She glanced up and couldn’t decide whether to smile or start digging her way through the floor as she took in the broad, grinning face staring back at her.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Marissa Albert drawled, letting her Southern roots show through like she always did when she was tired, annoyed, or picking on someone—three things that often went together. “And here I thought you were dead in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Nice to see you too, Marissa,” Cookie replied, setting her ID into the slot beneath the bulletproof glass. “Glad to see you’re as cuddly as ever.”

  “Cuddly? Girl, this body was built for cuddling,” the guard replied, her grin turning saucy as she winked at Hunter. “I keep trying to tell your man that, but he never takes me up on it.”

  “I’ll work on him,” Cookie promised.

  Marissa laughed and processed a visitor pass for her. Cookie tried not to wince when she realized the picture was actually the one from her old ID, or that the name read Charlene Jamieson. She’d finally gotten used to being Cookie James, and here was a blazing reminder that Cookie was a fiction she’d invented, one she’d seemingly left behind on sleepy little Secret Seal Isle.

  “Welcome back,” Marissa called after her as Cookie turned again toward the metal detector, handing her purse to the guard before stepping through. She waved over her shoulder after passing under the detector and receiving her checked and cleared purse back, then waited for Hunter to follow her.

  “Spinner is waiting for you,” Hunter said, leading the way up the escalators to the second floor.

  Just thinking about the Assistant Director brought Spinner’s face to mind, and Cookie shuddered, dreading the initial confrontation. Even though she was only here to consult a sketch artist and view the mugshots, there was no way her old boss was going to let her just slip in and out of the building without getting some answers. She fully expected the conversation to be an uncomfortable one.

  She followed Hunter off the escalator and couldn’t help the butterflies in her gut as he held the door open for her. Taking a deep breath, she clipped her visitor’s ID back to the hem of her shirt and walked into the ops center, her head held high.

  As she entered, everyone in the room turned and gawked at her. There were only a dozen or so, and Cookie recognized every single one of them; Patterson fiddling with the coffee machine, Zinser slouching at his desk doing the crossword, and Mackintosh critiquing some movie he’d seen the night before. She’d worked with all of them, many for years. They’d traded stories, coordinated investigations, gone on raids, and spent time at the neighborhood bar after celebrating a win or even after just surviving another day. And now they were all gaping at her like she was some kind of mythic beast.

  “Jamieson!” The bark cut through the stasis, startling everyone into motion again. Cookie looked past the other agents to see Spinner standing at the door of his office in the back corner of the room. “My office! Now!”

  “Good luck,” Hunter whispered as she hotfooted it through the maze of desks toward the field office chief. “Remember, it’s okay to gnaw off your own foot to escape the trap.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Cookie retorted as she scurried past. “Is it okay to cut off somebody else’s instead? Like, your partner’s?”

  A second name crackled across the room. “O’Neil! You too!”

  Cookie glanced back over her shoulder as Hunter scowled and started after her. She smirked and said, “Welcome to the lion’s den.”

  Despite her teasing, her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid it was going to leap up her throat and burst out of her mouth. Spinner had always been able to put the fear of God into her, and evidently that hadn’t changed.

  Assistant Director Harold Terrence Spinner was not a large man, Cookie noted as she stepped into his office. This was something she had noticed every time she’d been called on the carpet by him. He was perhaps five and a half feet tall, somewhere between stout and portly. His golden-brown head was not shaved smooth like Hunter’s darker scalp but still had a few wisps of graying hair clinging to it, particularly just above the ears. His face always seemed to have just a hint of stubble, which showed as almost white, like a reverse shadow. And his frameless glasses, with their rounded rectangular lenses, looked like they should belong to an accountant rather than an FBI agent. In fact Spinner himself would have fit right in at an accounting firm, hunched over a calculator, punching in numbers.

  That is until he looked up and speared you with a dark gray gaze as cold as a granite cliff. And then opened his mouth, and spoke in sharp, crisp tones that would have made any drill sergeant proud.

  “Agent Jamieson,” Spinner stated once she and Hunter were both standing in front of his desk. “How nice to see you again.” The edge in his voic
e belied the kind sentiment of the words. “After your rather abrupt departure this past spring, I would not have expected to.” His tone suggested that he would have been perfectly okay with that.

  “Yes, sir,” Cookie answered, trying to remember to stand up straight and not stare down at her feet. She felt as if she were a student who’d been summoned to the principal’s office. The difference being, she no longer went to this school. That fact helped her find the backbone to continue. “I apologize for the abruptness of my departure, sir. I felt at the time that it couldn’t be helped.” Looking back, she wasn’t so sure anymore. Surely she could have let people know in a gentler, more considerate fashion. But it was too late to do anything about that now.

  “I would gather so,” Spinner commented, perching on the front edge of his desk and somehow doing so without ruining a single line of his dress slacks, shirt, or vest. Even his tie, a dark blue with diagonal stripes, remained perfectly in place. “Might I ask what precipitated such a disappearing act? I assume it was not any sort of work dissatisfaction.”

  “No, sir,” she replied, glad that she could be completely honest here. “I was very happy with the job, sir, and with my co-workers. I—” she hesitated for a second, glancing at Hunter for support, and receiving it in a quick nod that encouraged her to plunge ahead. “It was DeMasi, sir. I was worried when I learned his organization planned to seek revenge against me for putting him away. I was afraid for my life, and for my mother’s, so I thought it best to leave the area.”

  “I see.” Spinner tapped his unusually long, thin fingers on his desk. “An understandable fear,” he admitted after a second, “and especially when a loved one is threatened. But surely you knew we protect our own.”

  “I do, yes sir,” Cookie agreed. “But I was still worried. And my mother was nearly frantic. The only way to give her some measure of security was to leave immediately and go somewhere DeMasi couldn’t reach us.” Spinner raised a single eyebrow, asking without a word, and Cookie explained, “Maine, sir. We relocated to a tiny little island off the coast of Maine.”

  “Hm.” Spinner turned his gaze upon Hunter, who froze as if he’d been turned to stone. “And you knew about this, Agent O’Neil?”

  For the first time since leaving, Cookie was glad she had not revealed her plans to Hunter, because now he was able to truthfully reply, “No, sir. I had no idea where Charlie—Agent Jamieson—had gone until she contacted me several months ago.”

  One didn’t rise to the level of Assistant Director of a branch office the size of Philadelphia by being slow at connecting the dots, and Spinner gave him a sharp nod. “That matter about the suspicious death,” he said. “Yes, that explains a great deal about why you have been back so many times since then.” He speared Cookie again. “The only remaining question, then, is why have you returned? Were you hoping to reclaim your old job?” His dry voice held the hint of a heavy door slamming shut, and Cookie knew that his last statement had most definitely not been an offer.

  “No, sir,” she said. “I’m here because there was a murder we think is tied to an art theft up in Maine, and I witnessed the theft. We were hoping to look through the mugshots and see if I could match any of them up to the men involved.”

  “She’s been deputized by the sheriff up in Hancock,” Hunter added. “So this is an official investigation, with Charlie acting as the liaison to local law enforcement as well as an eyewitness.”

  Spinner frowned and studied them both for another second. “Very well,” he said finally. “Agent O’Neil, you will assist Ms. Jamieson during her time here and extend her every courtesy as befits a member of local law enforcement.” With that he slid off his desk and moved to reclaim his chair, dropping into it with all the finality of an anchor hitting the ocean floor. Interview over.

  “Thank you, sir,” Cookie told him. Hunter was already at the door, and Cookie followed him out but stopped at the last second to turn back. “And I am sorry, sir. For what it’s worth, I really was happy here.”

  The crisp nod she received in return was little more than a jerk of the head, but surprisingly, it nearly brought tears to her eyes. Because she knew from working under him for years, that the small gesture was the Spinner equivalent of, ‘Yes, well, we miss you too, Jamieson, and I’m glad you’re okay.’

  She hurried out before she could make a fool of herself and caught up with Hunter over by the small breakroom area.

  “Well, that could’ve gone a lot worse,” he commented once she’d rejoined him.

  Cookie nodded and let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Yeah.” And it wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d expected. She grinned and punched him in the arm. “So, Agent O’Neil, care to show me the way to the mugshots?”

  He grinned back at her, and Cookie felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from her shoulders as they made their way toward the filing cabinets that contained the books of mugshots.

  16

  “Got one!” Cookie sang out, stabbing a finger down on the page as if the man pictured there would otherwise leap up and try to hide from her accusing stare. “Here.”

  Hunter, who had been at his desk catching up on some paperwork immediately hoped to his feet and hurried over. He leaned over the desk, peering over her shoulder at the image. The suspect was the heavier of the two men Cookie had seen, the one who looked like Boris Karloff.

  “Pavel Dreisser,” Hunter read out. “Austrian, emigrated in the early aughts, nabbed as part of an art-theft ring. Nice. You’re sure?”

  “Positive,” Cookie confirmed. “That’s our guy.”

  Hunter nodded and moved over to the computer at the end of the table, typing in Dreisser’s name and pulling up the digital version of his mugshot and accompanying rap sheet. “Known associates,” he recited as he scanned the information. “Daniel Ochoa.” He tapped on the name, and a second sheet appeared, this one showing the more athletic of the pair Cookie had seen at the gallery.

  “That’s the other one,” she confirmed. She scanned the computer screen and pointed at another name marked known associate. “Who’s that?”

  “Karl Voelker,” Hunter replied as he clicked it. A third screen opened, this one showing a man Cookie had not seen in person but had already glimpsed in a different photo. Big, well-built, handsome enough, with white-blonde hair, pale blue eyes, and a cold, callous expression. A husky—or a shark—in a suit. Hunter pulled out the photo he’d taken from Petra’s apartment and held it up to the screen to confirm what he and Cookie already knew—it was a perfect match.

  “Okay, so we’re looking at art theft, all right,” Cookie said, pushing back from the table to stand and stretch. They’d been at it for hours, and she’d spent the entire afternoon and evening hunched over the table, staring at mugshots. Even though they were all digitized, it was a lot faster and easier on the eyes to flip through pages in a book than to scroll through images on a screen. But man, it was murder on the back. She studied Karl Voelker’s mugshot. “What do you think they were doing at Petra’s?” she wondered aloud. “I mean, she wasn’t famous or anything. Why take her paintings?”

  “Good question,” Hunter said, scanning the three men’s rap sheets. “The last time they were caught, they’d just stolen a Matisse from a private collection. It was valued at over seventeen million.” He whistled then shook his head. “Nice as they were, I don’t see any of Petra’s going for money like that. Do you?”

  “Not a chance,” Cookie answered through a yawn. “Though what do I know? Anyway, at least we can put out APBs on these guys now.”

  “Already on it,” Hunter assured her. He tapped in a few commands, bundling the sheets together for an APB. It would go out right away, and every law enforcement agency from Philly to Maine would get the notification. Art theft was one thing, but murder was a whole other matter. Those three were about to find it a lot harder to hide.

  “How’re you feeling?” Hunter asked, straightening and turning away from the com
puter after he’d finished.

  “Good,” Cookie answered. “Tired and hungry, but good. Glad this trip paid off.” She’d worried that these guys would prove to have been too smart to ever get caught, which would have meant they weren’t in the system yet. She’d have hated coming all the way back here and facing all these old memories for nothing.

  “Well, whattaya say we go grab some dinner?” Hunter suggested, stepping back over to his desk to reclaim his jacket and pull it on. “We could stroll over to La Locanda Del Ghiottone, get some risotto or maybe some gnocchi.” He grinned. “I seem to remember you once likened their orecchiette alla Toscana to heaven. We could stop off, pick up a bottle or two of wine, and make a proper meal out of it.”

  Cookie had started smiling the minute he’d suggested La Locanda—she absolutely loved their food, and their warm, cozy atmosphere. But now her eyes narrowed. “Is this a date?” she asked carefully. “Because it sounds an awful lot like one.”

  He shrugged, trying to act nonchalant but not succeeding. “Well, you did agree to go out with me, remember?” he told her, staring down at his hands. “So I figured, we’re back here, and the earliest we can head back is tomorrow, so why not make the most of it?” He glanced up at her, his expression unusually vulnerable for him. “So? What do you say?”

  Her heart was pounding again, so loud she could barely think, but a smile claimed her lips. “I say yes,” she said, and watched a warm, sweet smile blossom on his face. This was the Hunter he rarely showed anyone, not even her. The Hunter beneath the gruff-agent exterior. The one who had his hooks in her heart.

  Hunter placed his hand on the small of her back as he guided her out of the building, and Cookie prayed her face wasn’t as red as she thought it was as all of her former coworkers watched them go.